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Party in the O.R.

Party in the O.R.

Today is my double mastectomy. Today is also my birthday. As he numbs me, the anesthesiologist wears a pink pointed hat, the string, thin as a Tuohy needle, stretched tight under his chin. Nurses patter around the room, prepping the procedure and blowing sound makers...

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Be Prepared

Be Prepared

A baby grand piano appeared after Billie moved in with her son. Fourth-rate elegance. Plywood garbage. The stroke took away her walking bass. Billie couldn't trust her left hand to play the blues, even after two years of physical therapy. Drinking a glass of water was...

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THROUGH THE WINDOW

THROUGH THE WINDOW

Demons cavort in the darkness of trees. Slender, knuckle-cracking things, whispering a wasp language. You stop your ears with moss, but the what-ifs and why-nots are siren voices. So you take scissors to your hair, swap florals for denim and Elvis for Iron Maiden,...

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Orange: Micro Series

Orange: Micro Series

Womb Cat wants to paint her house fluorescent orange. Call it Crisis. Call it citrus combating scurvy. Cat doesn’t go outside much anymore. She orders in her groceries. She doesn’t answer the doorbell, and whenever the mailman walks onto her porch with another...

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My Mother Calls Her a Head-Case Convict

My Mother Calls Her a Head-Case Convict

But here I am anyway, in the CVS on Perkins and Sixteenth, allowing her to turn me criminal. Like this. Don’t be, like, obvious. See? When she slides a lipstick into her palm, it’s so delicate, you’d think she was lifting a bird. At the counter, three Maybelline...

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AU: the night your husband proposed

AU: the night your husband proposed

You’re standing with toes far back from the edge, not prepared for a swim that night in Otsego when he sneaks up behind and throws you in from the dock, not out, but off to the side where it’s too shallow. You slice both heels on the zebra mussels, squat-swim to the...

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A THOUSAND MILES AWAY

A THOUSAND MILES AWAY

We were always driving and once in the night in the dark after hours and hours, days even of only night driving, you said to me. We’ve gone a thousand miles. We could have gone to New York by now. We could have gone anywhere. You said it in the dark. It was Cedar...

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Anthology II Contest Winners

Anthology II Contest Winners

Caterpillar Killer by Shastri AkellaDirty Shirley by Shannon BowringGiving Up by Catherine CadePicking Up Stones by Brad ClompusIn the Closet by Grace ElliottWays of Karst by Jamie EtheridgeSea Bugs by Amanda HadlockEndless Spoonful by Susie HaraCharlotte Sometimes by...

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Feeding on the Thamirabarani Metro

Feeding on the Thamirabarani Metro

Super fast and super premium. We wished that were true about the greyscale beat of our lives. Its expectations a stone in our gullets. When we died, one by one by glorious one, we were not prepared for these things, as we were only girls. Not before, and certainly not...

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The Hollowing of Her Bones

The Hollowing of Her Bones

Faye says she doesn’t believe in coincidence, but the day she burns the last of the cows, two women hurl themselves from dizzying heights like deadweight dropped into the sea. In the autumnal air, clotted yellow with ash, Faye claims a sudden lightness—a tug of going...

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